The Image of an Unmarried Woman in the Statements of High School Students (Linguistic and Cultural Sketch)

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to answer the question how (and whether) stereotypes about unmarried women function in the language of contemporary youth. The basis of the research are the surveys of 15-year-olds from Lublin regarding women specified in the article. I divide the paper into three parts: I begin with the approximation of the concept of stereotype, and then I characterize old maids – mainly based on dictionary quotes and student statements. I close the whole with the  discussion on how to perceive singles, using – as above – both dictionaries and literature in the field of linguistics, cultural studies, as well as from internet portals addressed to women. According to the results of the analysis, the expression old maid, which has been present in Polish for a long time, is rarely used by junior high school students, and in each case – in a negative, sometimes offensive sense. Students value positively only a young, ambitious woman, who consciously chooses loneliness. This is confirmed by the commonly operating new lexeme: single. One can risk a statement that in the stereotypical perception of the unmarried woman by young language users, a  warming component emerges more and more clearly, and valorises in plus the prolonged status of maidhood.